Consolidation of Rock in Rocky Architecture of Kandovan Village

Kandovan historical village is one of the most important attractive tourist sites on rocky architectures in East Azerbaijan province from the Skirts of Sahand Volcano NW of Iran. This village with unique landscape and rocky historical architecture is on the surfaces of a tuff layer. Nowadays, natural surface weathering of this architecture and intensity of decay phenomena in Kandovan village rocks causes of poor living conditions, ruination, and seasonal residence or nonresidential conditions. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the consolidation effectiveness of volcanic tuff-stone on Kandovan rocky architecture. For this propose petrographical, physical and mechanical properties of natural, weathered and treated rocks such as distribution of minerals, bulk density and total porosity, dry and saturated unit weight, water absorption, capillary absorption, slake-durability index and uniaxial compressive strength UCS; with different improvement materials are characterized using polarized microscope,  and X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD)). The improvement materials Nano silicate (NS) and Ethyl Silicate (ES). 
The results show that Kandovan lithic tuffs have poor durability and are very sensitive to predisposing factors to deterioration and this inherent vice instead to harsh climate caused the erosion of surface weathering. It can be seen that both consolidated materials retrofitting and improving the Kandovan stone conditions, and these materials increased rock strength compared to weathered and fresh stone samples.